


To Be Loved Wholly

by heartswells



Series: In Sickness and In Health [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Bulimia, Communication, Eating Disorder Recovery, Eating Disorders, Honesty, Internalized stigma, M/M, Mental Illness, Recovered Characters, Recovery, Shame, discussions on honesty & transparency & their role in facilitating genuine love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-27 09:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20945906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartswells/pseuds/heartswells
Summary: [no triggering details or descriptions of behaviors are included; tyson is mostly recovered.]Here was an era of Tyson’s life that Gabe was ignorant to. He had collected stray details in the forms of offhand comments, empty-eyed photos, and late night confessions, and he had clung to them, desperately trying to rearrange them into something comprehensive, but he could never find the insight he sought. It seemed wrong to love him so completely yet  know so little when his love was promised in sickness and in health.





	To Be Loved Wholly

“Should we get dessert?” Gabe asked as he watched Tyson empty his glass of wine in one crude swig; the rosé clung to his lips and shimmered on his smile. Outside, the lights of Denver’s skyline sparkled like a rich urban nebula, and stray beams filtered through the window into the dim restaurant to shroud Tyson in an angelic, neon glow. 

“I didn’t recover to skip dessert, Gabe,” Tyson quipped. Gabe, who had been stacking their emptied entrée plates for their waiter’s ease, paused, startled. Tyson rarely referenced his recovery, and Gabe was not ignorant of the gravity of such a joke. 

“Uh, sorry,” Tyson hastily amended. Suddenly unwilling to look at Gabe, Tyson fumbled with the menu pages, flipping them back and forth too quickly to read. He had not intended to vocalize his joke, but years of unwavering acceptance and devout compassion had lulled his subconscious into forsaking its guard and loosening his tongue. Still, any mention of recovery and all that it implied felt burdensome, out of place, and unfair, and guilt and embarrassment immediately took hold. Even mentions of healing and success, as positive and pure as they were, felt profane and forbidden. _ You don’t mention eating disorders at the dinner table_, the saying could go. 

“No, please don’t apologize, Tyson,” Gabe interjected, realizing that his lack of immediate response had been interpreted as annoyance and scorn. At that moment, their waiter graciously swooped in to clear their plates, and as Tyson placed their order, Gabe debated allowing the subject to drop. However, so rarely was he given the opportunity to hear Tyson speak about his past that he could not allow it to. 

“Truthfully, I wish you would talk more about it.” _ It_: what he meant was _ bulimia_, the word Tyson refused to say, and thus led Gabe to do the same. 

“You don’t owe me information, of course. I respect that. I just love you, and I want to know about you.” Anxiety took a hold of Tyson’s face at Gabe’s confession, and it seemed terribly wrong to Gabe. Anxiety shouldn’t dominate their interactions, and it filled him with the fear that the reason Tyson refused to talk about his past was a dread of his reaction rather than a desire for privacy.

Here was an era of Tyson’s life that Gabe was ignorant to. He had collected stray details in the forms of offhand comments, empty-eyed photos, and late night confessions, and he had clung to them, desperately trying to rearrange them into something comprehensive, but he could never find the insight he sought. For here was something that had almost rendered Tyson’s end, his death, his loss, his robbery. Here was an illness that had taught Tyson what it meant to be afraid and that had shaped him into who he had become, for better or for worse, and Gabe was ignorant. It seemed wrong to love him so completely yet know so little when his love was promised in sickness and in health.

Gabe wondered how much information he would have shared with Tyson if he were in the same position. He was wise enough to know that he could not ever know for sure without having experienced the same, and he was self-aware enough to believe that he probably would have shared less. To know that Tyson, open, honest, and readable as he was, so adamantly avoided the subject spoke of a gravity that Gabe could only grasp at. 

“I just don’t really know what to say, I guess. I feel stupid when I talk about it. Like it doesn’t matter. Like it shouldn’t have happened,” Tyson admitted. More accurately, it felt shameful—too shameful to even admit out loud that it was shame that he felt—and despite all the healing he had undergone, he still struggled to believe that his pain mattered enough to be worth talking about. 

“And I don’t want to be seen differently either, I guess. I’m not a tragedy or a sad story. I got better and came out the other side.” It was beyond Tyson’s imagination that anyone could hear the details of his past and view him as the same person. He was still too possessed by anger, shame, and regret to believe that anyone else would not feel the same way towards him as well. It did not seem true that Gabe would admire and respect him more for his ability to overcome hardship. It seemed only possible that Gabe would hate him for hating himself. It was unfair to Gabe, of course, who had done nothing to deserve such an accusation, but insecurity was never fair. 

“I do want to share my life with you, Gabe. It feels like you should know, like I should tell you. I’m just—it’s hard. I, well, I don’t even want to remember, y’know?” Gabe nodded, sifting through the insecurity and vaguity interlaced in Tyson’s words and treasuring the shards of truth. It had never before occurred to Tyson that Gabe would _ want _ to know, and he had never before questioned the potential consequences of concealing so much from him. Always, any mention of his eating disorder had seemed too much; he had never imagined that it could possibly be too little. He had never seen it for the rejection it was. 

“I’m happy now, Gabe. I can come here with you and eat, and I can make memories and experience the world around me. And that’s more than I ever dared to dream. I love you. But I think maybe you're right. Maybe the next step is to learn to talk about it. It’s just—it’s hard. I was _ taught _to never talk about it. But it’s you, and I love you, and I want to let you love me back,” Tyson said, conceding. Gabe couldn’t love him fully unless he was permitted to, and as long as Tyson pushed him away with his silence, he would never be able to.

“When you’re ready, I’ll be here,” Gabe vowed.

“Yeah,” Tyson said, surprised to realize that he knew that already. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> this turned into something entirely different than I intended. I might expand on this, maybe give Tyson's history, definitely write more happy, fully-recovered Tyson because I'm desperate for some hope that this fucking disorder will not be eternal. comments super appreciated.


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